By IPS Correspondents
Dakar, Sep 22 2008 (IPS)

The Senegalese capital, Dakar, is filled with street children from villages in Guinea Bissau. These boys from Senegal's southern neighbour – aged anywhere between four and twelve – have been sent by their families to study the Koran, but many are getting very little education.

Talibés like these spend as many as 16 hours a day in the streets begging. Credit: Jessica Clarke

Ten year old Ibrahim is one of a band of twelve Peul-speaking talibé from Guinea-Bissau who spend hours every day roaming the streets of Dakar begging for food and money, trying to scrape together the daily sum demanded by an Islamic scholar, or marabout, in Greater Dakar, in the suburbs.

They are dressed in rags, barefoot and dirty, their scalps covered in wounds and lesions.

The African Centre for Advanced Studies in Management, a training institute based in Dakar, released a report on Dakar's street children in August which found there are 8,000 children surviving as mendicants in and around Dakar. Thirty percent of these "talibés", as they are commonly called, are from Guinea-Bissau, from Peul villages just across the border in the northern regions of Bafata, Gabou and Birada. Another third of come from another of Senegal's neighbours, Mali.

Another group of Guinean talibés told IPS that they wake up at 5 am and beg in the streets until 9 pm, sometimes later. Sidi Sow, originally from Bafata, told IPS: "Our marabout is in Guédjewaye (a distant suburb of Dakar), so we have get moving bright and early to get to Dakar."

The marabouts refused to speak to IPS, with the exception of El-Hadj Dia, who lives in Grand Dakar. Thirty-nine of his students are from Guinea-Bissau. According to Dia, since parents now send their children for a religious education without the the customary gifts along with their children, marabouts have no choice but to send the children to the streets to make ends meet.

"Parents send their children empty handed, but we have our own families to take care of. I do everything in my power to teach my talibés the Koran," he explained to IPS.

The Empire of Children, a non-governmental centre based in Dakar, has released statistics claiming that 200 Guinean children went home to their families this year. The centre works in partnership with the International Organization for Migration on reintegrating child victims of human trafficking and returning them to their families.

"At the centre, the majority of the street children we rescue are from Guinea-Bissau. After we get them from the streets, we work with local contacts in Guinea-Bissau who help us find the children's biological fathers," explained Moussa Coulibaly, a staff person at Empire of Children.

According to Coulibaly, of the 100 children at the center, at least 60 are from Guinea-Bissau.

Coulibaly also told IPS that the phenomenon is a traditional practice in a number of countries of the sub-region, namely Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Gambia and Guinea. However, worsening living conditions in rural areas are pushing talibés towards Dakar, where they're easy prey for exploitation by their marabouts.

IPS met with three parents who had traveled from Guinea-Bissau to claim their children at the centre. They were clearly distressed by what they found. Ismaël Baldé, had come for his son Abdoulaye, who he'd left with a marabout 3 years earlier. The marabout had told Baldé last year that his son had died and been buried in Dakar.

"The marabout told me that my son fell ill and died. We had already mourned him when Empire of Children workers told us he was in Dakar. Its true, I saw him, he's alive and I am happy," he told IPS, tears welling in his eyes.

Abdoulaye cannot wait to get home. "All I want is to leave here, and see my mother and cousins. My marabout made me suffer a lot," he told IPS. "If I didn't bring home 500 CFA, I was badly beaten. It was so bad one day I decided to stay on the streets instead of going back to the marabout. Since I didn't return he thought I was dead. I'm happy to see my father again."

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